A United Front

Extract

In an admirable artide on the Spanish situation by the Dominican Father H. Munoz these words occur: ‘What Spain needed was an intelligent organizer who could coordinate all the disjointed elements into a united front against the destructive forces of irreligion and anarchy.’ On reading this it is impossible not to reflect that this is an echo of what many English Catholics have been saying about their own country for a long time.

The present position of Catholics in England is not so very far removed from that of Catholics in Spain just before the revolution. Indifference and lack of organization sold the pass and allowed the forces of an anti-religious Socialism to seize power. And not till the Catholics of Spain found their diurches pillaged, convents burned, schools secularized, religious orders expelled and a sheaf of anti-Catholic laws on the statute book did they wake up to the realities of the situation and organize themselves into a force which now promises to be the salvation of Spain.

In England, a generation of ever-increasing indifference in matters of faith and morals has enabled the anti-God propaganda of Moscow to make tremendous progress. The traditional Conservative and Protestant party, product of the Reformation, exists in a fog. In matters of faith and morals they simply do not know where they stand, having neither standards nor guidance. And from not knowing to not caring is but a short step.

Liberalism no longer counts. The more extreme Liberals have gone over to Labour. A few have thrown in their lot with the Conservatives. The rest plough a lonely furrow in the wilderness.